Southern California -- this just in

Man gets 6 years for stealing identities of service members

September 15, 2011 | 5:42
pm

A Redlands man was sentenced to six years in federal prison Thursday for stealing the identities of about 16,000 reserve and active-duty service members that he used to buy expensive merchandise, authorities said.

Rene Quimby, 42, was charged with using the identities to defraud the Army and Air Force Exchange Service to buy iPods, digital cameras, computers, washers, dryers and other merchandise, the U.S. attorney's office in Dallas said. The items were later sold.

The case was tried in Dallas because the exchange service is headquartered there.

Quimby was accused of using file-sharing programs in 2007 to hack into the victims' computers and steal Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, addresses and other information.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations.